


Iter Stellarum

by metalmeisje



Category: The Yogscast
Genre: AU, Gen, Timeline Fuckery, let me know if i missed a warning?, three iterations of xephos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-26
Updated: 2014-12-26
Packaged: 2018-03-03 17:04:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2858339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/metalmeisje/pseuds/metalmeisje
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The thing with different dimensions is that sometimes, you manage to run into yourself. Twice. Xephos doesn't mind, usually - but these two hit closer to home than he would like. (The one with three iterations of Xephos with different stories but more similarities than they like.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Iter Stellarum

**Author's Note:**

> Am I going to spam my AO3 account with everything I write? Damn straight I am. But I quite like this.
> 
> This is mostly me musing about timeline fuckery related to RP. Zephos would be 'my' Xephos, and then there are two others: Blue, who will eventually become Israphel and has managed to cheat death to a greater extent than most people thought possible, and Xephos, a younger version that still has so much ahead of him when it comes to the War ofthe Sands and other forms of betrayal. They stumble into each other and try to figure out where they stand. They're different, but not in every way. Using different names for the three versions to avoid confusion. Thanks, Cad and Nanu, for letting me borrow your characters. Quotes at the beginning and end are courtesy of Robert Frost and Symphony Of Science.

_now all of this is illustration of the fact  
_ _that time and space are linked together  
_ _as you're moving through bent and curved space and time  
_ _you feel like you feel a force  
_ _that force is gravity  
_ _that is the secret of the stars_

_~_

_For thousands of years and thousands of lives, people have attributed meaning to the strangest of things. It's something we do to make sense of the world around us, searching desperately for symbols and patterns in everything around us so we can map out a world that is terrifyingly untouchable otherwise._

“D’you really think this is a good idea, Zeph?”

Zephos doesn’t turn his head when his friend starts talking. Instead, he ignores the voice at his waist while he keeps his stare fixed on the rows and rows of glass prisons in front of him, still unfinished – but they’re getting there, they really are. He knows about the pros and cons better than people think, has heard them a thousand times before; sometimes, he wonders if the load they’ve taken on their shoulders with this project might just be a bit too heavy. But-

But it pays well and it opens so many door that it’s impossible to resist. And it creates order where there is none: it changes the respawn, that intangible beast that catches them every time but looms over them all in horrifying strangeness, into something that they can almost hold between gloved fingers, turning it around in their hands as they study and learn and improve.

With a sigh, Zephos turns his back on the ant hill of scientists that scurry to and from the half-finished room, carrying glass panels and trying not to get electrocuted as they connect miles upon miles of wires. Honeydew is looking up at the tall man, thick brows knitted in disapproval as he leans casually as ever on his pickaxe.

“You do realize you can leave that thing in your office, friend? We’ve got better ways to dig, now.”

Honeydew huffs at Zephos’ less than graceful way of dodging the question but doesn’t push further. He knows it’s no use. The dwarf shakes his head, grabbing the hilt of his tool a little more firmly to reassure himself and his friend both.

“I could. Why’d I do somethin’ like that, though?”

He wouldn’t, Zephos supposes. Some people are made for progress and others-

Others fare better when they are conserved in the here and now forever.

_When we first saw the stars, we were probably too busy not getting eaten by the ancestors of our current lizards and elephants to pay the bright lights in the sky much notice. But as time passed and we made our presence on the planet more solid, more safe, more controlled, we ended up with more time to spend at our leisure in between killing and being killed, surviving and dying. So we looked up and wondered who was looking down on us. If there was anyone looking back at all._

Blue doesn’t consider himself a god. Not really, anyway. But if others call him that, he’s not the man to object. Not after everything.

His sword meets no resistance as it slashes through the fabric of the world and he steps through with the ease of someone who has done exactly this many times before, the not-quite-sound of reality knitting back together again behind him comforting as always. Not that he thinks that it would ever disobey.

The world doesn’t work that way.

“Blue. I didn’t expect to see you here.”

Blue’s calm gaze meets eyes in a shade of azure just a little warmer than his own, and he straps his sword to his back before he speaks. Zephos is watching him with crossed arms, head tilted just the slightest in confusion at the unexpected visit, but there’s no real hostility in his eyes. Not any more – or maybe not yet. Sometimes, even Blue doesn’t bother to untangle all the knots to see what comes when.

If he were to close his eyes, he would be able to see all timelines that converted here as if they were routes on a map, hidden from sight and all around them like branches knotted together in bright-sharp complexity.

But he keeps his eyes open and smiles at the man in front of him as if everything is still possible.

“I just came to check up on your progress, friend.”

_Stars have been interpreted as the souls of the deceased and big balls of gas that just float in the nothingness of space without meaning a thing. Stars have been a map for sailors so they wouldn't get lost, something to hold on to so they wouldn't get swallowed by sweet siren songs or natural disasters._

_Stars are constellations and destiny and destinations. Stars are patterns._

“I hate you all.”

The doors clicks shut with not nearly as much force as Xephos would have liked. He’d try again, but the urge to turn around and slam them shut in an attempt to satisfy his need to unhinge something doesn’t quite manage to win from the desire to run away, leave that stupid factory behind him and hide somewhere until he no longer feels like clawing someone’s eyes out.

They keep saying that everything will end the same way. Like there’s some stupid sense of destiny that they won’t ever be able to run from – and Xephos refuses. He fucking refuses because that’s exactly what he doesn’t want to hear.

So he runs. He runs for a long time, wondering if going to see Lalna is an option – and immediately discarding it for the stupid idea it is. He doesn’t want to see anyone right now, even though the distraction would be welcome.

He hates watching the two of them. Blue, with his sword that he carries wherever he goes and the way he twists every word that Xephos speaks to use it against him. Like he’s just a child that needs to be chastised. And Zephos, who is not one but ten nails in his coffin with all the buttons he presses, the way he looks at Xephos with _pity_ in his eyes _._ Xephos doesn’t want fucking pity, he wants them to stop talking about everything that can’t be avoided and leave him alone.

Eventually, he settles against a tree to catch his breath and stares at the sky; that one bit of emptiness in between stars where he knows his past would be – if this had been his own world. Which it bloody isn’t.

He isn’t going to make the same mistakes, he decides. It’s not that he wants to go back, not really.

It just reminds him of what he wants to run from.

He can’t forget.

_First comes the dawn. The sun rises in the east, bringing with it new beginnings, new light that bathes the world in expectations. We welcome the first rays of the sun because of the feeling of hope that it symbolizes. Everything is possible again, every leaf unfolds and curls open, photosynthesis kick-started into action as light is turned into fuel, into life._

“I know you guys see me as the young, stupid one. I’m not an idiot, Zephos. Don’t look at me like I am.”

“Is that such a bad thing, though? Being younger?”

Zephos holds a hand up to interrupt Blue, who seems just about ready to make some casual remark about how time doesn’t matter – and really, none of them want to hear that right now – and stares intently at their admittedly younger self.

“I know, I know. You don’t want to hear my _stupid_ shit, you’ve made that abundantly clear. But the thing is-“

“You’re damn right I don’t want to hear it! I’ve had enough of your bullshit.”

“But you still have the chance to change things.”

A third voice, then.

“Does he?”

Two pairs of brightly glowing eyes snap to Blue in annoyance and the arguing duo groans in unison, for once at someone else instead of at each other.

“Shut up, Blue.”

_Let’s not forget, though: just before the dawn there is always darkness, the easily forgotten but no less terrifying endlessness of the night that curls its shadows around everything and everyone before the rising sun banishes the memory of it. For a while._

 “You don’t know shit about what I’ve been through.”

Zephos runs his hands through his hair in frustration and the younger man in front of him almost imitates the gesture that feel awkwardly familiar, even when it’s mirrored back at him. He drops his hands before he finishes the motion though, and settles for a scowl.

Exhaling sharply, Zephos shakes his head in defeat.

“You know what? Fine. Be stubborn then. Throw away your chance to change the things we can’t. See if I care.”

Blue watches them both leave.

_Then comes midday. The sun reaches the peak of its journey across the skies and making sure everything is lit up as before and after are equally long. The afternoon sun is an established presence, moving so slowly from east to west that no one bothers to track its course. The morning is long behind us and we have hours to go before we need to sleep, so we focus on here, on now._

The Labs have been here for so long now that the sky-high building has almost become as much part of the landscape as the hills and trees surrounding it have always been. The pipes have rusted and been replaced and rusted again, a never-ending cycle of renewal, but Zephos doesn’t mind. People look after them like they look after every other part of the Labs – and in turn, Zephos looks after _them_.

It’s a nice synergy, really.

Light falls through his window and he leans back in his chair, lifting his fingers from the keyboard for a moment to pop his joints and roll his shoulders back. The hours behind a computer are long but necessary, if only because Zephos like to keep an eye on all the reports that appear in his inbox. Still, it gets tedious sometimes.

“Why won’t you show me the cloning bay?”

Xephos watches him from a distance, leaning against the doorframe and his eyes a stormy dark blue – but with worry rather than aggression now. He carries himself as awkwardly as they all do, Zephos muses as he studies the other man. Limbs too long and face too much of an open book to ever really go unnoticed.

“Because you won’t like what you’ll see there, friend.”

“I don’t care. You’re hiding something.”

“Fine.”

Zephos saves his work with a few quick keystrokes before he pushes back his chair and gestures for his double to follow him.

“You want to see what I’ve been doing? It’s called _progress_. Come on.”

_Finally comes dusk. The sun sets in the west, sinking ever so slowly but always too fast behind the horizon that we once more failed to reach, shadows lengthening and warmth disappearing as the light fades more and more._

“We're drawn to it all the same, I would imagine. Even when everything else is gone." Zephos hates sounding so ominous, so _resigned_ , but stories like this make him wish that there were things to be changed. That he could believe everything he tells Xephos when the younger man is sulking in a corner – but all evidence is against them, it seems.

Xephos watches the other man with a frown, his confusion obvious as he tries to make sense of everything.

“Who the fuck is Israphel?”

“Not a very nice guy,” Blue replies in a surprisingly light tone. “He looks a bit like a constipated creeper."

“He sounds ridiculous."

And the men can’t help but laugh at that, because it's true. It’s a ridiculous name, a ridiculous story; everyone finds sand annoying, if only because it gets in places that you don’t ever want to have sand (like cloning bays and your underwear). But really, sand that corrupts?

It’s like a story someone told to amuse people, with exciting heroes and a plot that twists and turns around adversaries and dangerous _almosts_ until the falling action comes to an end and there is a happily ever after.

Sand that corrupts?

Don’t be silly.

But as Xephos asks question after question, his initial sarcasm disappearing when the other men tell him about old friends, about what happened and happens and will happen, Zephos grows silent. He worries his lip between his teeth as Blue tells another version of the same story - and he thinks about his own. Thinks about change and falling and can only return Xephos’ panicked confusion with a sad smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.

Tomorrow will be different, tomorrow is full of new opportunities and blank slates.

Today isn’t.

_Everything and everyone retreats, gets back to a safe place to sleep or hide from whatever is coming out with only the worst intentions. Night falls and brings nothing but darkness._

Blue leaves, afterwards. He slices the air with his sword once more and steps through, looking back once at Zephos before he seems to disappear into thin air. Even gods get angry sometimes, he realizes.  Even though he already knows everything that was said, has seen it happen more times than he can count and knows exactly what path they’re all taking, it still leaves a bitter taste in his mouth.

He skips through the void and he goes home and he keeps watch. For now.

_the woods are lovely, dark and deep_  
 _but I have promises to keep_  
 _and miles to go before I sleep_  
 _and miles to go before I sleep_


End file.
